Have you ever thought about the extraordinary accident of being alive right now — in this specific moment of history, with all its particular challenges and possibilities?
That's the weight and the gift the word contemporary is carrying. And it's more interesting than a simple time stamp.
Contemporary means belonging to or occurring in the present; living or occurring at the same time. It comes from the Latin contemporarius — con (together) + temporarius (of time), from tempus (time). To be contemporary is to share the same time — to be co-temporal, to breathe the same historical air.
We use it descriptively: contemporary art, contemporary literature, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Someone who is your contemporary is alive at the same time as you — a fellow inhabitant of the same now. The word is neutral in its dictionary definition. But it carries, when you feel it fully, something more than neutrality.
To be a contemporary of any era is to be shaped by it in ways you can't fully see from inside it. The anxieties, the technologies, the political upheavals, the particular questions that your time considers urgent — all of this is doing something to you, forming your thinking, creating the context for everything you make and do and believe. You're a creature of your contemporary moment whether you engage with it deliberately or not.
But the deliberate engagement is what's interesting. Every era asks questions that the people living in it are uniquely positioned to address — because they're living them. The contemporary artist is not just using contemporary techniques; at their best, they're processing what it actually feels like to be alive right now, in a way that only someone inside this moment could. The contemporary thinker is not just aware of current events; they're asking what this moment reveals about the permanent questions.
There's also a solidarity in the word. Your contemporaries — the people sharing this specific slice of history with you — are your companions in an experience that is genuinely, historically unique. You're all figuring out the same unprecedented things together. That's not small.
Here's your question: What's something about being alive right now — in this particular historical moment — that you feel uniquely positioned to understand, address, or contribute to? What does your contemporary status give you that people of any other time wouldn't have?
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